


the sky was dark but you were clear

by melwritesthings



Series: where the wind rages through your hair [2]
Category: Anne with an E (TV)
Genre: and then stuff like this happens, help i never know what i'm doing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-01
Updated: 2018-09-01
Packaged: 2019-07-05 11:42:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 858
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15862926
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/melwritesthings/pseuds/melwritesthings
Summary: "When Anne allows herself to think of him—late at night and under her covers, where she can safely let her mind wander without knowing looks from Diana or Jerry—she thinks of bedrock, rich harvest soil, the very foundation beneath Avonlea.He is sturdiness, reliability. Gilbert Blythe is the earth: all at once ancient and vast, yet unceasingly present."





	the sky was dark but you were clear

**Author's Note:**

> this is a companion piece of sorts to 'the glaciers made you and now you're mine'. really it was just an exercise to help with a severe case of writer's block!

Gilbert is solid; he is real and sound.

 

When Anne allows herself to think of him—late at night and under her covers, where she can safely let her mind wander without knowing looks from Diana or Jerry—she thinks of bedrock, rich harvest soil, the very foundation beneath Avonlea.

 

He is sturdiness, reliability. Gilbert Blythe is the earth: all at once ancient and vast, yet unceasingly present.  

 

His constancy scares her. Anne Shirley is not used to such steadiness.

 

Waking early some mornings, Anne lingers in front of the glass and studies herself. Marilla would chide her, but Anne sits transfixed as the morning light moves across her face.

 

Anne is flighty and wild; she scurries about like some rodent on the forest floor. Where she often thinks that she might be blown away with a gust of wind, forever to float on the breeze, Gilbert is grounded and still.  

 

She feels sometimes like a piece of sea glass being dragged along with the current of her own mind. In the dawn light Anne lets herself wonder what it might be like to anchor herself to someone like Gilbert.

 

Lately she catches herself watching his fingers as they scribble notes across his slate. They are long and quick, often stained with ink or dirt, and Anne must fight the instinct to seize them in her own hands. She wants to feel his skin, lightly dusted with earth, beneath her own.

 

When John Blythe is buried in the cold winter ground, Anne thinks that she’ll never look at the soil the same way again. Standing at the little graveyard, she struggles to reconcile the dirt that yields harvest and springs buds with that which has claimed Gilbert’s father.

 

What was once safe and comforting—the rich, fragrant earth that coats the hands of Matthew or Jerry or Gilbert—feels harsh and unkind.

 

And Gilbert is not solid anymore.

 

She distantly feels some towering glacier fall away, great sheets of ice plunging into the Arctic. A piece of him breaks apart and drifts unmoored across a distant, dark sea.

 

Anne can no sooner chase after this shard of his heart than she can reach Gilbert himself. Soon he, too, is seaward. He boards a steamer without so little as a glance back.

 

She dreams of icebergs. Jagged and remote—dangerous if you get too close—reaching skyward while plunging deep into unknowable sea. Gilbert Blythe is no longer bound to the land beneath Avonlea or Prince Edward Island; he belongs to the ocean current.

 

She reads that icebergs can get trapped in packed ice, or melt as they move towards the equator. When she receives a letter from Trinidad, Anne wonders if he’ll ever drift homeward again.

 

Somewhere deep in her soul she can sense him as he moves about the globe. As Anne carries on about her days, Gilbert charges forth into the world. He disembarks in some strange land as she braids her hair in the morning. He tastes a new fruit while she walks arm-in-arm with Diana to school. He crests the top of a faraway peak as Anne reads aloud in story club.

 

When he sets off for the next port, Anne feels a tug at her heart.

 

Gilbert arrives at their own home port in the same manner of his leaving—quietly and without much warning. He has an energy Anne had not sensed in him before. Neither still and weighted, nor lost and adrift: he is restless and hungry and _alive_.

 

Anne makes her peace with the earth that spring, laying on the forest floor. She feels the land, firm and real beneath her, and thinks again of John Blythe. She used to find it so unfair: a man like Mr. Blythe, alone underground. But today Anne studies the canopy of trees above her and feels comforted.

 

Perhaps Mr. Blythe doesn’t mind. When it’s her turn to go, Anne hopes that her body, too, will nurture a tree that shades and protects someone she loves.

 

She hears a rustle of shrubbery and glances up to see Gilbert tentatively approaching. Anne offers a slight smile, and so he moves towards her, sitting with his back against the tree beside her.

 

Wordlessly, Anne sits up and faces him. Where she once averted her eyes from the intensity of his stare, today she meets it openly. It is Gilbert who looks away first; boyish and flushed, he shifts his gaze to her hands.

 

Her breath hitches slightly as she watches his hands move uncertainly towards her own. Anne smiles again and, at last, seizes Gilbert’s hands within hers. His skin is stained with ink and planting soil. Anne breathes a laugh at the familiarity.

 

Kindred.

 

Gilbert sags in relief at her touch. A slow grin spreads across his face and Anne feels it mirrored on her own lips.

 

 _This is no anchor,_ Anne muses. Gilbert would never still her, never hold her back. Electricity ripples beneath her skin and she thinks it could propel them forward forever. _Yes_ , she knows they are destined to be in motion—

 

As sure as the earth that spins beneath them.

**Author's Note:**

> i'm on tumblr at aanneshirley if you ever wanna chat or if you wanna tell me this sucks :)


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